Denial
is a Worm fic by Nara'la.
Taylor Hebert is not a parahuman. She has no powers. It's pure coincidence that Lung happened to slip on a trash can lid and knock himself out in front of her. She knows this... now if only she could get anyone else to believe her.
Denial contains the following tropes:
- Adaptational Dumbass: While still far from an idiot, this story's version of Lisa is much more prone to going down power-induced rabbit holes or drawing the wrong conclusions from the data presented.
- Awesome, but Impractical: Contessa's Path To Victory is presented as having elements of this: It can in theory let her achieve any goal that doesn't involve the Endbringers, Eidolon, or Scion, but Paths to achieve difficult goals may require years of dedicated effort or elaborate manipulations, costing her the opportunity to accomplish anything else in the meantime.
- Cassandra Truth: The only person who knows and is willing to admit that Taylor doesn't actually have any powers, despite her continual protestations to that effect, is Contessa. Lung is actually deliberately perpetuating the misconception and protecting her so he can defeat her in a staged epic fight and keep his villain cred from tanking when it becomes clear he was beaten by a normal person.
- Contrived Coincidence: Happens a lot, from Lung slipping on a trash-can lid and knocking himself out in front of Taylor to Taylor's flailing causing Rune to miss her shot and hit Hookwolf instead to Taylor picking a random place to hide in Winslow and just happening to pick the same place Bakuda did.
- So much so that it is basically how Taylor’s powers seems to work
- Entertainingly Wrong: Most people assume that Taylor does have a power which she used to defeat Lung and more, and is simply lying about it. It does make more sense then the truth does...
- Exact Words: Comes up repeatedly with Dinah/Oracle's predictions.
- In the second chapter, Dinah convinces Taylor to help her escape from Coil by telling her that the odds of her escaping with Taylor's help are triple what they would be otherwise. She doesn't mention until after Taylor agrees to help that the base odds of her successful escape were only 1%.
- Later on, Bakuda has filled Winslow with bombs, taken the students hostage, and is demanding Lung and Denial come in to face her. Piggot floats a plan to basically fake getting ready to send Denial into Winslow in order to buy the Protectorate and bomb squad time to figure out how to take down Bakuda, and uses a question from Dinah to confirm that there is a less than 1% chance that anyone in the PRT, Protectorate, or government will decide to actually send Taylor into Winslow. Taylor shows up, and is promptly kidnapped and dragged into Winslow by Lung.
- Mistaken for Badass: The entire premise of the story. A combination of Contrived Coincidence and people spectacularly misinterpreting the evidence results in virtually the entire Bay being convinced that Taylor is a ridiculously powerful parahuman who can easily one-shot Lung, Hookwolf, or anyone else she happens to encounter.
- No-Sell: People believe that Taylor does this to Thinker powers like Lisa's and Contessa's.
- The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: Lung towards Taylor/Denial. He knows that if anyone else figures out that Taylor is just a normal girl with no powers or combat training, it will ruin his reputation. As such he repeatedly intervenes to protect Taylor from other challengers, because he can't allow her to be defeated until he can arrange to kill her under circumstances that let him fake an epic battle between the two of them.
- Lisa has the option to pass her Thinker test with flying colors and go safely into Watchdog. It would just require her to follow Coil's plans for her, implicitly admitting that he's smarter than her, and she wants to bring him down.
- Running Gag:
- When listing Taylor's accomplishments, they often finish with, "...and beating Rune," almost invariably followed by someone else asking asking who Rune is.
- Lisa/Confirmation being called a Thinker 1 who only states the obvious.
